Crack in the Wall

This is the first track off of Vega's album, Tales from the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles; it was released in 2014 (shortly before I began this blog).

The song has a very interesting rhyme scheme. For the first two verses, it's a b c b c c d b (as long as we rhyme "sun" with "ravine" and "scene"). Then the last verse is longer; it starts the same but then keeps going: a b c b c c d b e e f b.

The song's lyric is structured like a traditional fantasy story. Instead of a wardrobe leading to Narnia, a rabbit hole leading to Wonderland, or a train platform leading to Hogwarts, our speaker sees the following: "A crack appeared inside a wall/ A door sprang up around it... a wildish wind blew it open wide." 

While such stories are always about young people and the speaker is not that, nevertheless she has a "childish mind" and enters. After all, the door seemed to be made especially for her to find: "I could not believe I found it." 

Once she entered, did she find the fantastical fauna of Pandora from Avatar, the outlandish characters in Willy Wonka's factory, or the mystifying creatures of Oz? After all, she says, "A world of wonder lay without"...

"It was all of nature's calling." She's... outside. In nature. A really spectacular example of nature, but basically just outdoors. She lists: "field, forest, cloud, sun, heights and valleys, ravines, ivy, thorny scenes."

Still, she is enraptured, saying that she was "surrounded" by her "heart's delight." What made this "lap of nature's sprawling" so amazing? Well, there were "cascades of salt water falling," and that doesn't usually happen; saltwater is already in the sea, and the rivers that form waterfalls on the way to the sea are freshwater, having been made by rain or melted snow. 

But aside from that salient (pun intended) fact, she felt delighted to be there because "each thing did love its place."

The chorus is simply "And so, and so it goes." This is a commonplace expression, but it is one popularized by Kurt Vonnegut in his book Slaughterhouse Five; in it, Vonnegut's narrator is usually saying "so it goes" while reacting to something negative, often a death, with a feeling between acceptance and resignation... but sometimes rue. 

Back to our song. The speaker meet "the one whose land it was" and asks for a "token," something to take back to her world as a private souvenir. She is told "no" three times. The way she phases this is that she was "thrice denied," which echoes the three times Peter denies that he knows Jesus in one night (as Jesus predicts). She asks one more time, as humbly as possible, without any "pride"...

..."and found [she'd] lost that world." Oh, no. She has somehow been cast out-- or more pointedly, cast back in, to within her wall.

She has "returned as one now broken/ To a crumb, a rag, a withered leaf." This is how she sees her world-- the one she'd always lived in before entering that "door"-- now. 

She freezes in the "chilly wind of cold relief." Wait, why is she relieved? We thought she was sad to be back. Perhaps this uses the other meaning of "relief," a sculpture carved into a wall. When something is said to be "thrown into relief" it is made real, given depth. 

Like Dorothy returning from Oz, she is "as from a dream awoken." 

But also like Dorothy, she can go back (there are more than a dozen books in the Oz series). Alice returns through the lookingglass, and the children pass through the wardrobe into and out of Narnia as if it had a revolving door. 

Here, too, the speaker ends her song: "But then a crack appeared inside a wall/ And a door sprang up around it." She gets to go back in... as long as she never takes anything out with her.

In most cases, we imagine the questing youth going "into" the new world. Here, the speaker goes "outside" through the door that the crack opens in the wall; the world of wonder lay not "within" but "without."

She lives in a world of walls. A house, a city. She has had the opportunity to explore nature-- maybe she went camping?-- and now sees her urban world pale by comparison. But she knows that to return with a shell or stone is to subtract from the very nature she loves.

Now, however, she has something more important that a thing to remind her of that wondrous place-- she has a way to get back to it. And she can't wait until she does.

There, "each thing did love its place." The same seems not to be the case in the city. At least for her; she realizes she hates it there.

(While the young adult novels referenced herein are relatively recent, in history-of-literature terms, the idea of going through a portal into another world is at least as old at the tale of Orpheus following Eurydice through a cave into Pluto's cavernous underworld.)

Vega's first song on her first album in years is "Crack in the Wall," and the first song on her debut was "Cracking." Does she consider this album, seven years after her previous one, some sort of new debut? 

Next Song: Fool's Complaint

The Silver Lady

This rare track is available on volume 4 of the Close Up series.

What starts off as a traditional folksong turns into a meditation on an issue of incredible emotional trauma-- what to do with an elderly parent, especially one with mental-health issues.

The song begins as if describing a child's visit with an imaginary fairy-friend: "When I was a little girl... I once spoke to the Silver Lady/ But I never saw her again." It continues that this mystical lady "flew out of the sky" and could go "riding on the water" and on a "golden pony." So, typical fairy-tale imagery.

Then there is a note of sadness: "Only once did I hear her laugh/ And it echoed far and lonely." So, despite her otherworldly trappings, she is not some sort of angel. She was "the crazy man's only daughter," which might have something to do with her state of mind.

We now hear the conversation alluded to in the opening verse, about the one time our speaker actually "spoke with the Silver Lady." The conversation took place on a riverbank.

The child approached the Lady, who was crying, to comfort her: "If I had wings like you, I would be flying... and singing."

She says she had no wings-- perhaps she only looked like she was flying when she was galloping on horseback?-- or "I would surely be gone."

She continues that she is her father's only daughter, but that he had older sons... who all left her to take care of their "crazy" father, who is also aging.

And now, she is torn. She wants desperately to leave, and is feeling strangled by her being tethered to him: "I feel the ocean pulling me... I want to go with [the breezes]... This life is killing me." But how can she leave him, helpless and alone? Plus, her abandonment would "break his heart."

She turns away, and the child follows the river back home.

"The next day I heard she had taken her horse/ And gone off to parts unknown." This is the first point we know for certain that the Lady is not just a figment of the child's vivid imagination. 

So the Lady does leave. And her father? He stayed at home, stopped coming into town, and started "roaming down by the riverside." And if rumors are to be believed, he committed suicide, drowning himself in the river.

The speaker never saw the Silver Lady again. But now, she says, "when I felt a silver breeze/ I knew she had sent it from wherever she was/ To tell us that now she was free."

For a song that begins in fantasy, the scenario is all too real. The "burnout" felt by caregivers, especially those who care for those with Alzheimer's and other conditions, can be devastating, as can the guilt of leaving them. And far too often, it is their daughters left with this obligation, while the sons are free to leave and start their own families. 

Today, at least for those of us in cities, there are several options. Caregivers can be given respite workers to take care of their loved ones, so that they can continue to have somewhat-normal lives. And in some cases, the best option is round-the-clock professional care in a dedicated facility, provided by people working in shifts to avoid exactly this sort of burnout.

Mental illness never takes a break, let alone a vacation. But human beings, even machines, cannot be expected to work ceaselessly. The Silver Lady should have insisted that her brothers help. She could have reached out to her neighbors, to the local clergy or other charitable organizations. But it sounds like this all took place in a rural setting, with few such resources.

What begins as a child's fairytale of a beautiful Silver Lady turns out to be a lesson in how poorly society has dealt with mental illness throughout most of its history. At least now things are beginning to change, so that women don't have to go gray-- sorry, "silver"-- so young.

Next Song: Crack in the Wall 

Anniversary

This is one of Vega's loveliest songs. It recalls Billy Joel's "Summer, Highland Falls" in the prettiness of its melody juxtaposed with a mellifluous and erudite verbiage.

It begins with idea of feeling nostalgic in the autumn. The weather chills, and you know the year is ending... so you get a bit sentimental, musing on your "memories," jumping from one to another "unrelated histories," and mourning "unresolving fantasies." Even the wind is "thick with ghosts."

This wind "whips around in circuitries," spinning fallen leaves in miniature tornadoes. The wind "carries words as strangers exchange pleasantries." But does "as" mean "the same way that" or "at the same time that"? Depending on which it is, "do they intrude upon your private reveries" could have its "they" refer to the strangers or to their pleasantry-words themselves. Either way, here you are, lost in memory-- when a stray "Hello, there" jolts you back to reality.

The rest of the song is a series of pieces of advice; it's what Vega might say if asked to give a commencement speech at a graduation: Notice people being brave every day. Notice how people find new ways to be nice to each other. Touch objects that will remind you of these things people did.

Also: Note when important things happen, and then celebrate them them every year on that date. Don't plan, now, to later mourn things that will pass; enjoy them while they are here! Make room in your life to do the kinds of things now that you will want to remember later. And "make the time for all your possibilities."

Every verse ends with "each/every corner/street." As you walk along, you will see things. They can either trigger memories and regrets... or offer opportunities to have new experiences. It's the same corner that you turn, the same street you walk.

What can be different is how you see it. But that, of course, is all the difference.

Next Song: The Man Who Played God

Penitent

This is the first song on Vega's 2001 album Songs in Red and Gray. 

The title is not in the song, but the word "penitent" is a religious one, and it means "one who repents." (It is related to the word "penitentiary," which gives a clue as to that institution's initial purpose.)

The song starts the album off in an opposite stature than 99.9F; "Rock in This Pocket" brimmed with bravado.

Here, we find the speaker saying she was formerly "proud" and "above the crowd," but now is "low," even "on the ground." From this perspective, she is so lost she cannot even tell what her options are, "what avenues belong" to her.

We can't know this from the audio recording, but the liner notes make it clear that these lines are being addressed to God: "Now, what would You have me do? ...I wait to hear."

It seems the sin she is repenting is one of arrogance; she tried, she tells God, "to stare You down."

(It should be noted that there are major discrepancies between the liner notes and the official lyrics as posted on Vega's website. The liner notes seem to favor the (precious) lowercase, starting most lines this way, so all their capitalization is suspect. Meanwhile, the lyrics on the website have at least one major, obvious enjambment error that also calls their credibility into question.

This is no mere grammatical whine on my part-- there is a world (or more) of difference between "You" and "you"-- the very difference between God and human. And this is the very word whose capitalization is inconsistent, both within each version and between them. Well, also "Your" and "your."

If "You" means "God," which it must, what shall we make of the instances of "you"? It would be one thing if the switch happened midway through the lyrics-- first she addresses God, then a person. And she does seem to drop the You altogether midway in the liner version, but even there we have "Now what would You have me do/ I ask you please?" early on. This is clearly one consistent question addressed to one party, but first with a capital and then without.

Adding to the confusion, the liner notes drop the capitalized version altogether at this point... while the website version continues them. But... does it to so to mean this is still God being addressed? Or is it just that the word falls at the start of a line, and the website prefers the formal, correct style of starting each line with a capital?

I am going to say the entire song is addressed to God and the lowercase "you" and "your" instances are all lazy typos. The rest of the song only makes sense if she is speaking to, and of, God, as we shall see.

Yes, this is Vega's divorce album, and maybe some of this is supposed to also be to her ex. But the metaphors don't work. And what's she implying, if that's the case-- that he's a god? That he thinks of himself as one? Well, then at which points does she mean her ex, and which God? It would be impossible to untangle, even if the capitals were consistent, because lines start with capitals as well as references to God.)

The speaker says she is not the first to try to "stare [God] down." One is "the mother," probably Mary, who does try to sway Jesus' actions at various points. Also, "the matador," which is a very odd reference; the only thing I can imagine is that this is means Aaron and the incident of the Golden Calf, the closest thing the Bible comes to a man-and-bull scenario. And "the mystic," which could be any number of prophets to argued (or even wrestled) with God: Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Jonah...  

God's response to her challenge is to "appear without a face/ Disappear but leave [His] trace." Which is his "unseen frown." She simply "feels" God's disapproving disappointment.

Well, staring God down didn't work. So she has to apologize. But how? She is powerless, even powerless to think of her options. So she asks God how He'd like to be apologized to:  "Now what would You have me do, I ask You please?"

She says she waits for His "voice... word... sign." But admits, even then, "Would I obey?"

Well, God is not coming to her, so she starts to "look for" Him, on the "moor/ the desert and the ocean floor." Before she was only "down to the ground," now she's miles underwater-- and muses, "How low does one heart go?" How much must she lower herself before she is forgiven? (Would she look for her ex in all these places? Or is nature where one seeks God?)

"Looking for your fingerprints/ I find them in coincidence" (again, something you would say of God, not a person, who has no command over Fate). Many people feel that such cases can only be explained through Divine intervention or Providence. She seems to be forcing herself to this state though. She has to "make [her] faith to grow." It's not happening naturally, you see.

Finally, she seems to simply try asking for a pardon, sort of: "Forgive me all my blindnesses/ My weakness and unkindnesses/ As yet unbending still." First, she admits that her "unbending" nature is not a show of strength but of "weakness."

But then she wants to be forgiven... without having to change what she's doing wrong! She is "still" the same stubborn person, but wants God to just accept it and forgive her for it. "Look, I will not submit, and you'll just have to get used to it. Sorry." Strange "apology," that!

This next phrase could be taken two ways. The lines are "Struggling so hard to see/ My fist against eternity." Is she struggling to see something with her eyes, against the infinite void of eternity?

Or is this the "see" of the interviewer's question: "Where do you see yourself in five years?" Perhaps she wants to "see"-- in other words, "to see to it that"-- her fist is set against eternity.

And what is this eternity she sets her fist against? God? Death? The Universe? All of the above? Or even all of the Above?

The song ends with a question: "Will You break my will... could I obey?" This is a core religious question-- does belief mean submission? Does accepting God mean accepting God's control?

She doesn't want to fight God anymore. But how can she continue to be a strong, independent person with free will... and also "obey"?

If the one being addressed here is her ex-husband, she did leave him. And if the one being addressed is God, well, Vega left her Christian background for Buddhism. She might also have opted for the Jewish faith [not that I know how religious he was] of her once-husband, Mitchell Froom; the very word "Israel" means "One who struggles with God."

And then there was Galileo, who was forced to renounce his scientific discoveries by the Church; he is quoted as having said (albeit in Italian), "I refuse to believe that God gave me a brain and then told me not to use it."

She tries to be penitent. But she cannot. She was not built to bow.

And Whose fault is that?

Next Song: Widow's Walk

My Favorite Plum

This waltz is about the deliciousness of wanting and waiting and not-yet-having. It is the last song on Vega's Nine Objects of Desire, on which they are, um, 12 songs. So it is unclear how, among the other songs, these nine objects are distributed; some songs must have none, while others have one-- and maybe more-- apiece.

What is clear is that this song is about one object, a plum, and the desire for that object. Another object of desire is the "tombstone" from the previous song, most likely. She never outright says she wants a tombstone, though, just that she "likes" tombstones.

This plum, however, she clearly desires. The entire song is about wanting it-- or whatever it represents. I mean, could a whole song just be about wanting this one plum?

One of the reasons the plum might be so desirable is outlined right off: it "hangs so far from me." Distance, like absence, can make the heart grow fonder. Also, it "sleeps," and "lays/ languid." The inner flesh presses the outer skin, indicating that it is "bursting with secrets." And all while "never noticing me here below." How temptingly coy!

Its appearance? "See how it shines." Its flavor? "It will be so sweet." It is luscious? "I've been so dry/ It would make my heart complete."

How does it... sound? It "calls" to her. It wants her to consume it, she just knows. And all this lying about? "It lies in wait for me."

She knows she wants this one and none else: "This is the one for me." This refrain will be repeated. She has "seen," even "had," the "rest"... and also the "best"-- this one-- which "is the one for me."

However, the course of true love never did run smooth. There exists the possibility that she may not achieve this plum: "Maybe a girl will take it/ Maybe a boy will steal it/ Maybe a shake of the bough/ Will wake it and make it fall." And so, "You say that I'm foolish to trust."

Yet, her faith is unshaken: "It will be mine, and I know it must." How can she be so certain? She is "right here/ Longing endlessly." When it falls, she will be there to catch it.

In many ways, the singer is in the same position as the figures on Keats' Grecian urn: "Fair youth... thou canst not leave thy song... Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss/ Though winning near the goal."

Does this sound frustrating? Keats says no: "Do not grieve... For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!.. For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd/ For ever panting, and for ever young."

So too, in this song, we find a moment frozen in time-- the wanting of the ripe, succulent plum, the imagining its smooth rind giving way to the teeth, the longing for the shock of sweet wetness as the pulp caresses the tongue, the dreaming of the sticky juice running rivulets down the chin...

You know, this song may not be about a plum, after all.

Next Song: Lightning

World Before Columbus

This simply-worded and -structured song is one of Vega's loveliest. The sentiment is pure and deep, without being... sentimental.

It imagines the speaker's world without the one she loves. If he left, or died-- or for some other reason his love and life were "taken from" her-- the "color" would leave her life. She would lose "half [her] sight," she counts so much on being able to know his perspective. After the colors faded, the "light" itself would go, not just "dim," but "dark."

Her world would be "cold"-- the very "trees would freeze"-- and "cruel."

Now, popular misconception holds that, before Columbus, everyone thought the world was flat, but he proved it to be round. In fact, the world's shape-- and even its size-- were known to the ancients, even without sailing anywhere (they observed lunar eclipses, in which Earth always cast a round shadow; only spheres do that).

Still, we know the myth of the "flat Earth" theory, and here, the speaker so depends on her lover that without him, her world would be "flat." Someone could "sail to the edge, and [she]'d be there, looking down."

"Looking down" has many meanings. She would be "sad," but also "looking down" over the edge, as if saying she was contemplating jumping off it. Later in the song, she confirms this: "I'd swim over the brim."

After lauding explorers like Columbus, she then reconsiders and decides that they sought relatively worthless treasure: "land... riches... trinkets." But "oh, they never will have you." Even his "hair" is made of "gold" and "copper." She asks, "How could they weigh the worth of you, so rare?" They would totally miss the fact that his love is precious beyond that of any precious metal or gem.

Is the speaker over-dependent on her lover-- that without him, she would have no light or warmth in her life, not even a will to live? Perhaps. But I don't think this song lapses into codependency-- it merely engages in the kind of exaggeration that typifies love songs. Would it be as powerful to say, "If your love were taken from me, I'd be upset for a long while, but fine in the long run, especially with my strong support system of friends and family?"

And what of Columbus-- did others reach the "New" World before he did? Historians seem to agree that this is the case. Nevertheless, it was Columbus-- not a nice man, by current scholarship-- whose voyages opened (what came to be known as) the Americas to interaction with the rest of the planet, and who established a base here whose descendants remain to this day.

Again, this heartfelt song is one of Vega's purest expressions of affection, and one of her just-plain-prettiest songs. Maybe if someone had felt like this about ol' Columbus, he would have just stayed home with her.


Next Song: Lolita

Undertow

To explain the title: The "undertow" is the intense pull, or current, caused by a breaking wave as it recedes back into the sea. Its name comes from the fact that the force is along the sea bed, "under" the surface, and that it can "tow" an object, animal, or person back out to sea along with it, smothering it along the sea bed.

This is a surprisingly violent song. While it is about a relationship, it is not a love song, as it does not contain the word "love" or anything like it. Instead, there is only need... and the hatred of that need.

The speaker wants to "swallow" the songs' object-- "whole," the way a serpent does-- then disgorge "only bones and teeth." Later, we have sharp or pointed weapons like "the edge of a knife," "needles," and "bullets." We also have hard things, like a "stone," a "diamond," and another "bone."

Then there are signs of negative emotions: "tears," "secrets," "hunger," being "weak."

Even if all of these images are only metaphorical, what is the end of all of this hostility and angst? She wants him to be, of all things, "free."

The conflation of freedom with death is a longstanding one, the premise being that mortal life is a prison sentence, and only death can set one free. She has the idea that the body is some sort of cage, and that by removing it, the spirit will be released, at liberty.

Her current plan toward this objective is to... digest him. "We could see what was underneath/ And you would be free then."

Her previous plan was to use the salt of her tears to erode his flesh. "Once, I thought only tears could make us free/ Salt wearing down to the bone/ Like sand against the stone."

In other words, now she is using anger-- before, sadness.

Again, what is the reason for either of these plans for skeletonization? It seems that, if he is miserable enough, he won't have the wherewithal to leave her. He won't have the physical or emotional strength to resist her, and she can thereby possess him: "I am friend to the undertow," she says, using that imagery of grabbing, pulling, and drowning. "I take you in, I don't let go/ And now I have you."

She takes the idea of "possessiveness" to the extreme, as in the book and movie Misery.

She does not want this "freedom" only for him, however. She herself wants to be "sleek," to pass through life without attachments or friction. That's why she is fascinated with streamlined things-- things with edges, blades, and points. They can do damage without being damaged themselves. They can inflict pain, yet feel nothing, experience no pain themselves. She has clearly experienced pain in relationships before, and so tried to shed all connections.

In short, if she could be "sleek," she "would be free then." Which is what she wants.

But shedding all externalities has not produced the desired effect. Her emotional anorexia has failed to render her "sleek" as a python, polished pebble, or sword blade. Instead, "this hunger's/ Made [her] weak."

One mystery is resolved-- why she now resorts to imagery of consumption. She's psychologically hungry and wants to feed. She's eaten away at herself so much, she has nothing left, and so she turns to another, to feed off of him.

But she can barely admit that she needs someone else. So instead of saying, "I need him here to satisfy me," she sees herself as altruistic! "He needs me here to satisfy him!" she thinks. "I will do him the favor of stripping him 'down to the bone,' too, and 'free' him as I have freed myself."

Naturally, if the man wants to be "free," what he should really be is... elsewhere. If he has enough strength, still, to make it to shore.

Next Song: Some Journey

Cracking

It has to be intimidating, deciding which song to put first... on one's first album. This, after all, will be the first series of sounds the listener will hear and forever associate with that performer. It's a very powerful form of the "first impression" idea-- the firm handshake, sincere eye contact, and genuine smile that determine if you are going to like this person or not.

This speaker (we cannot assume it is the author, as a rule) chooses to start with an invitation: "Walk with me/ And we will see/ What we have got." Friendly enough.

But first she presents an ambiguity, an pronoun without an antecedent. "It's a one time thing," she says. Um, what is? Perhaps she means a first impression. It is a "one time thing"-- there is no second first impression. However, we are constantly meeting new people. We don't notice how special it is because it "just" occurs frequently.

The speaker, who has asked us to walk with her, then notes that her pace is "ticking." This could refer to the sound itself, but then why not "clicking," the sound often made by women's "footsteps"? Because they are so regular. They are coming one per second, like the ticks of a clock, or "water dripping from a tree." This happens after a rain, or perhaps a thaw. The choice of the image tells us that we are outside, or at least near a window. 

"Walking a hairline" likely has nothing to do with hair, but with a "hairline fracture." We can take this from the title, "Cracking," but also from the fact that, in general, people do not walk on hairlines in the "receding hairline" sense of the word. This is a more poetic way to say not that she is "walking on a thin line"-- or as the other cliche has it, a "walking a tightrope"-- but not on a thing at all, not a line or string or wire.

No, she is walking on a crack, a faultline, between two tectonic plates. The ground is cracking apart, and she is unsure as to which side she will choose. So far, the crack is just a hairline, and she can easily straddle the rift. So far. Perhaps that is why she is walking both rapidly-- one footfall per second-- yet also "very carefully," a word she enunciates in individual, ticking syllables.

Now we learn something about her emotional state. "My heart is broken," she says, and something about the way she delivers what must be the ultimate songwriting cliche-- the broken heart-- makes us hear it anew. The way she says this, it makes us think that, for the first time, the speaker truly appreciates this image. Her heart, like a teacup, has been shattered. The pieces are jagged and painful, and a beautiful thing is irreparably destroyed. The heart is also broken in the way a watch can be broken-- perfectly unchanged to the eye, yet now useless.

But then she continues, "It is worn out at the knees," like a pair of jeans, like something soft, not something brittle. How much time has her heart spent on its metaphoric knees for this to have happened? How much praying, begging... how much crawling? How much quick walking, as if walking away from the pain of the relationship?

Her heart is not working, and she details this: "Hearing muffled/ Seeing blind." Her heart is having a hard time processing input. She is becoming emotionally inert; she says, still of her heart, "Soon, it will hit the Deep Freeze" [sic]. It will come a solid lump of ice, in reaction to the fissure she treads.

While her heart is broken and her relationship is in break-up mode, she responds by trying to become solid, stolid, and stable.

It's not going to happen. "Something is cracking." Try though she might to respond to her situation by withdrawing, something is cracking. She can't even locate its source: "I don't know where."

She has a few guesses. "Ice on the sidewalk," which indicates that the dripping trees were in fact thawing, meaning that spring is imminent. This is also indicated by the ice breaking up underfoot. In fact, one of these cracks is likely the "hairline" she walked earlier that leant itself so well as a metaphor to her emotional state. Other things that could be "cracking" are "Brittle branches/ In the air." The branches died in the winter, but were held in place by the ice that killed them. Now that the ice is melting, the branches are free to snap off and fall.

She has been walking on the sidewalk, her shoes "ticking" on the hard cement. But now that the winter is ending, the Sun returns. After so much gloom, especially, she finds the Sun "blinding." Even her "blind" heart can sense the light, it is so intense.

And now what has been inert is now "dizzy." The colors we have had so far-- of black dead branches, gray sidewalks, and white ice-- are now overwhelmed by the Sun's "golden" rays.

And we have another color, "green." This new life is in motion as well, "dancing." She has reached "the park," where the grass and flowers and bushes and budding trees are waving in the spring wind.

The effect is irresistible. The sheer amount of energy she encounters-- light, color, movement, new growth-- has shattered her emotional inertia. Notably, it is "afternoon." The apex has been reached... and then passed. 

The Sun is glad to see her, but in the way a teacher is glad to see that a tardy student has finally arrived. The Sun scolds her, wants to know "where the hell" she has been. Doesn't she know she is supposed to be in the sunlight, where the life is? Why had she been wasting time in the "hell" of an emotional winter? What does she have to say for herself?

At the outset, the speaker told us something about a "one time thing." We thought it was the meeting itself, our first impression. But now, perhaps not. Perhaps she is telling us about the relationship, that a break-up situation "happens a lot," but that each time is unique, a "one time thing."

If the relationship caused her to withdraw emotionally to that point, we certainly hope that this one in particular was a one time thing.

IMPACT: 

Vega's eponymous debut went platinum in the UK, and also sold well in the US. 

Next Song: Freeze Tag